If the visits of an acquaintance become less frequent than formerly, the falling off is not always to be imputed to want of regard for you, or to having lost all pleasure in your society. The cause may be want of time, removal to a distance, precarious health, care of children, absence from town, family troubles, depressed fortunes, and various other circumstances. Also, with none of these causes, visiting may gradually and almost insensibly decline, and neither of the parties have the slightest dislike to each other. If no offence has been intended, none should be taken; and when you chance to meet, instead of consuming the time in complaints of estrangement, meet as if your intercourse had never been interrupted, and you will find it very easy to renew it; and perhaps on a better footing than before. The renewal should be marked by a prompt interchange of special invitations—followed by visits.
Unless your rooms are spacious, you cannot have what is called a large general party. Some of your acquaintances must be omitted, and all that are left out, are generally offended. Therefore it is not well ever to have such parties, unless your accommodations are ample. Squeezes are out of fashion in the best American society. We have heard of parties at great houses in London, where, after the rooms were crowded to suffocation, a large portion of the company had to pass the evening on the stairs; and where coaches, unable to draw up from the immense number of these vehicles that were in advance, had to remain all night at the foot of the line, with ladies sitting in them. When morning came, they had to turn back, and drive home, the carriages being all they saw of the party.
It is better to give two or three moderate entertainments in the course of the season, than to crowd your rooms uncomfortably; and even then to risk giving offence to those who could not be added to the number.
If such offence has been given, try to atone for it by inviting the offended to dine with you, or to pass an evening, and asking at the same time a few pleasant people whom you know she likes.
You may have a very intimate and sincere friend who does not find it convenient to send for you every time she has company. If, in all things else, she treats you with uniform kindness, and gives reason to believe that she has a true affection for you, pass over these occasional omissions of invitation, and do not call her to account, or treat her coolly when you see her. True friendship ought not depend upon parties. It should be based on a better foundation.
If no answer is returned to a note of invitation, be not hasty in supposing that the omission has sprung from rudeness or neglect. Trust that your friend is neither rude nor neglectful; and believe that the answer was duly sent, but that it miscarried from some accidental circumstance.
A friend may inadvertently say something that you do not like to hear, or may make a remark that is not pleasant to you. Unless it is prefaced with a previous apology; or unless she desires you “not to be offended at what she is going to say;” or unless she informs you that “she considers it her duty always to speak her mind,”—you have no right to suppose the offence premeditated, and therefore you should restrain your temper, and calmly endeavour to convince her that she is wrong; or else acknowledge that she is right. She ought then to apologize for what she said, and you should immediately change the subject, and never again refer to it. In this way quarrels may be prevented, and ill-feeling crushed in the bud. When what is called “a coolness” takes place between friends, the longer it goes on the more difficult it is to get over. But “better late than never.” If, on consideration, you find that you were in the wrong, let no false pride, no stubborn perverseness prevent you from making that acknowledgement. If your friend, on her part, first shows a desire for reconciliation, meet her half-way. A vindictive disposition is a bad one, and revenge is a most unchristian feeling. People of sense (unless the injury is very great, and of lasting consequences) are easy to appease, because they generally have good feelings, and know how to listen to reason. Dr. Watts most truly says—
“The wise will let their anger cool,
At least before ’tis night;
But in the bosom of a fool,